A congressional committee has called for New Jersey's U.S. attorney, Christopher Christie, to testify at a hearing next week about his appointment of former Attorney General John Ashcroft to a lucrative assignment as a corporate monitor.

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), who will chair the Feb. 26 hearing, said she and other Judiciary Committee members want to discuss Ashcroft's hiring, role and compensation at Zimmer Holdings, an Indiana-based manufacturer that accepted a monitor to settle a fraud investigation with Christie's office.

The contract calls for Ashcroft's Washington-based consulting firm to collect between $27 million and $52 million over 18 months.

"We're interested in knowing about the process by which he was selected to be the monitor and what exactly he's doing to earn the fee," Sanchez said in an interview.

The committee made the request by e-mail and phone to the Justice Department's Office of Legislative Affairs about two weeks ago but has not received a response, according to Sanchez's chief of staff, Michael Torra. Ashcroft also was asked to testify but has not responded.

Reached by phone Friday, Christie declined to discuss the request. But the topic came up the day before, when he held a news conference to announce a corruption indictment against state Sen. Joseph Coniglio, a Bergen County Democrat.

"If my bosses at the Department of Justice call and ask me to come and testify, I will follow their direction," Christie said then. "Every Justice Department -- not just this administration, but ones before -- feel, and I think rightfully so, that any response to Congress should be a coordinated response and have a department position."

Justice Department spokesman Paul Bresson said the department will send a witness to the hearing but declined to say who it would be or what would be discussed. He said there were no rules prohibiting U.S. attorneys from testifying before Congress.

The hearing, before members of a subcommittee on commercial and administrative law, represents part of the growing scrutiny on out-of-court settlements between corporations and federal prosecutors, a practice that has flourished in recent years without court or congressional oversight. In many of the settlements, called deferred prosecutions, prosecutors privately negotiate the terms with target companies, then appoint private lawyers to monitor the companies' compliance.

The Government Accountability Office, which bills itself as the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, also has agreed to launch its own investigation into the practice, according to spokesman Charles Young. The Justice Department is considering new uniform guidelines for prosecutors in such settlements, Attorney General Michael Mukasey told legislators this month. And Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th Dist.) has introduced a bill that would increase oversight and establish specific rules for such appointments.

A GROWING TREND

U.S. attorneys across the country have used deferred prosecutions and appointed dozens of private monitors in the past five years. Ashcroft was one of five monitors Christie named in September as part of a $311 million settlement with the nation's largest makers of knee and hip implants. The agreements followed a two-year FBI probe into kickbacks from the companies to orthopedic surgeons who used and promoted their products. Among those manufacturers was DePuy Orthopaedics Inc., a subsidiary of New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson.

Ashcroft's appointment drew attention after Zimmer took the unusual step of publicly disclosing details of his contract in Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Terms of the contract were first reported by The Star-Ledger. Christie, the companies and the other monitors have declined to release the other contracts.

Bresson said the Justice Department is still reviewing a request by the House and Senate judiciary committees for names and contract details of all monitors in deferred prosecutions.

New Jersey GOP Chairman Tom Wilson and other critics have blamed the dust-up on partisan politics. They note that Ashcroft, a conservative stalwart, has long been a lightning rod for Democrats looking to criticize the Bush administration. And that Christie, a former Bush campaign fundraiser, would be the state party's front-runner if he decides to run for governor next year.

Sanchez defended the need for a hearing, saying the surge in deferred prosecutions deserves a deeper look because it might give the impression that companies with deep pockets can privately negotiate their way out of trouble.

"It's sort of created two completely different systems of justice," she said, one in which "individuals are accountable to the judiciary, but corporations are not."

John P. Martin may be reached at (609) 989-0379 or at jmartin@starledger.com. Jeff Whelan may be reached at (973) 622-3405 or at jwhelan@starledger.com.